Saturday, June 29, 2013

Continuing up the Devils Garden trail, you head towards Partition and Navajo Arches. Here the trail gets interesting...you actually have to walk up and over several of the fins. Dead ahead is the trail...

Looking back from climbing that fin

In many places the only trail markers are these stone cairns. We lost trail at one point but found our way back eventually thanks to the in-built compass.

On to Moab and Arches National Park, featuring lots of natural sandstone arches. Delicate Arch is the most famous (and the state emblem of Utah or something like that). There are lots of rocky, archy things to see...The morning was frosty cold and my car roof can attest

The frost stayed on north facing slopes all day

On advice of the rangers, we drove to the end of the park and worked out way back to the entrance during the day. First up, Devil's Garden Trail leads you through some of the sandstone fins that later form arches (ie later as in geological time) .

Ice clinging on in the shadows

The first arch the trail takes you to is Landscape Arch; the longest spanning arch in the park and the longest known in the world according to the Natural Arch and Bridge Society (NABS)! It is 88.4m (290ft) long. You used to be able to walk under it until giant chunks started falling off in the 1990s.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Some pictures of travels I never got around to posting...After a visit to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, I headed out to Arches National Park in Utah (near Moab). On the way we drove around the back of Monument Valley which was a bonus. We didn't quite get the full effect, but some cool formations were casting long shadows late in the day:

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Up early the next morning we explored along the vantage points heading out to Hermit's rest, west of the village. (This might be last post for a while - I'm gonna dig through some older stuff and see if there is anything missing...Arches National Park should be in there somewhere).